The day after Jacob Sullivan was sentenced to death for the rape, torture, and murder of 14-year-old Grace Packer, the girl’s adoptive mother is pleading guilty in court and is expected to receive a life sentence for her role in the brutal killing.
Morning Call reporter Laurie Mason Schroeder has been reporting from the courtroom on Friday afternoon, posting updates on Twitter as prosecutors provide testimony about Packer’s role in what the Bucks County District Attorney described as a “rape-murder fantasy” concocted by Packer and Sullivan up to a year before the murder.
As CrimeOnline previously reported, Sullivan told detectives following a failed suicide attempt in January 2017 that he raped and beat Grace in early July 2016, with Packer’s encouragement, and then stuffed her body in a sweltering hot cedar closet inside a Bucks County home. The couple reportedly came back many hours later, when Sullivan said they expected to find the girl dead, but she was still alive. It was then that Sullivan strangled Grace to death.
Sullivan and Packer, who reportedly lived with a third woman in a polyamorous relationship, are believed to have kept Grace’s dead body in that attic closet, packed with cat litter, until October of that year, when they became fearful about being discovered and dismembered Grace’s body before tossing her remains in a rural field. Hunters found her remains on Halloween 2016.
Schroeder along with a Philadelphia-based reporter said on Twitter that said prosecutors testified at the sentencing hearing that Packer, Sullivan, and the woman installed a sex swing just outside of the closet where they kept Grace’s body. Packer and the other woman also went up to the attic to dress daily, according to the reporters.
Packer and Albright also kept their clothes in the attic and went up there every day to get dressed.
— LaurieMasonSchroeder (@LehighCourts) March 29, 2019
Prosecutors say, while Grace Packer’s body was stored in the attic, Sara Packer used the attic daily as she stored her clothes up there. There was also a sex swing installed up there after the body was put up there.
— Jim Melwert (@JMelwert) March 29, 2019
The judge also just heard that Packer, Sullivan and their girlfriend Kate Albright installed and used a “sex swing” directly outside the closet where Grace’s remains were hidden.
— LaurieMasonSchroeder (@LehighCourts) March 29, 2019
Packer has reportedly been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, plus 52 to 104 years.
